We Are Losing Our Estuaries!

"Breathing estuaries aren't nice-to-have things.
More than just an indicator of how we're doing environmentally they're really
important ecosystems in themselves. Ask the fishing industry.

"We seriously need to turn the figures around.
And we haven't. That is scary."

In 2011 the Southland Times made water quality the foremost election issue and over the last three years things have probably got worse. This National led Government has possibly overseen one of the most environmentally degrading periods that this country has ever seen. It has cleverly limited the extent of the damage through blocking any independent public reporting.

In 2012 Eugenie Sage joined me in highlighting the degradation of our local estuaries after recent research revealed the enormity of the problem.

I wrote a letter in support of the editorial because this is something we can't ignore and the price of providing China with milk powder shouldn't include our most important ecosystems:

I appreciated the editorial (June 20) ‘Time for
action to
save our Estuaries’. In 2011 The Southland Times made water
quality the most
important issue of the local campaign due to the wide spread
concern about the
quality of our rivers.

After research was published in 2012 we
discovered that our
estuaries are eutrophying at frightening rate. This is concerning
not only
because we are losing important natural habitats, but estuaries
are also the
nurseries for many of our commercial fish.

The National led Government has no intention of
doing
anything substantial in addressing our shocking water quality
statistics when
bottom lines only require that quality shouldn’t get any worse and that rivers should be safe to wade in without
endangering
health (90% are polluted now).

The $20 million over four years to help improve
water
quality is only a token gesture when the Government has set aside
$400 million
to support the intensification of dairy farming.

The Government also stopped the five yearly
independent
environment reports (the last was in 2007) and has dictated that
any future
reporting will be done under their direction. It is clear that
they do not want
the truth to be known.

The Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan
Wright, has voiced
concern about the on going weakening of environmental reporting
and the poor
regulation of damaging industries.

Environmental degradation should not be seen as
acceptable collateral
damage in support of economic growth. We desperately need to shift
to an honest
economy that recognises the external costs of polluting industries
and build a cleaner future.

Comments

We all do, or we should all feel a responsibility for them. In invercargill we have a negative effect whether we wash our car on the street or own a business or farm near a tributary.

Historically we treated them like swamps and wetlands, just useless environments to dump waste into or to try and reclaim. We now know that they are amongst our richest natural habitats and highly important breeding grounds for many fish and birds. Estuaries provide ecosystem services that have huge natural and economic value: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/estuaries/estuaries03_ecosystem.html

The tragedy, Shane, is that you subscribe to the 'tragedy' concept for the Commons. It doesn't have to be that way, wasn't always that way and can be quite the opposite. Only there are people like you determined to make your view of the Commons, a tragedy.

Estuaries are like the sea, air or our National Parks, they can never really be 'owned' but are essential to maintain for ourselves or the world at large. If we looked at the environmental services they provide they should be very expensive anyway.

Popular posts from this blog

The latest Unicef report has us languishing at the bottom of the developed world in relation to the health and welfare our children and youth. This report was based on the data our government collects and concerningly, with regards to child poverty, a ranking wasn't provided because of a refusal to follow standard practice (an admission of failure?). In many documented areas we are seriously neglecting our young people (ranking numbers are determined by the data provided from a maximum of 41 developed countries):Child Poverty (41/41?) I consider that we must be by far the worst in the developed world for child poverty when the Government refuses to use the same measures as other countries so that we can be ranked. Our Children's Commissioner and the Child Poverty Monitor currently state that 14% of our children suffer from material hardship. We have a much higher threshold to determine this and require 7 elements to recognise hardship, while most other countries use only two.…

Mark Richardson, a former New Zealand cricketer and media personality, has made a valuable contribution by asking the "frilly undie crowd" to "shut up listen" to his latest attempt at mansplaining motherhood and parenting.

Richardson acknowledged that it was hard work but had the view that it is simply a fact of life and what we have to do, but can't be considered a job.

I can understand his flawed reasoning that being a mum does not fit the normal definitions of a job: there is no formal employment process to take it on; no job description provided; no agreement to sign; no holidays or sick days provided and it certainly isn't automatically paid. However, by not viewing it as a job and a hugely valuable one at that, it has meant that it has little status or recognition. There is no training or qualifications needed to be a mother and it generally isn't considered useful to include on a CV under 'wor…

Given the city's relatively static population the National Government chose Invercargill as one of the cities to lead its state housing asset sell off in 2015. In the 1980s the region had over 800 state houses and after continuous divestment, the remaining 360 were to be sold to a private or NGO social housing provider. At that time only a handful of people in Invercargill were on Housin…